GanttChart for ClearQuest is a unique plug-in for IBM Rational ClearQuest developed by CM-Consult. It allows project managers, executives, and all team members to view tasks from the project plan.
Project managers like GanttChart because it is easy to use. With two clicks GanttChart allows re-planning tasks, and automatically updates the corresponding task fields. That is GanttChart for ClearQuest allows you to plan tasks directly from ClearQuest in real time mode.
The most important feature is that after the installation GanttChart for ClearQuest works as a single application with ClearQuest, and allows project managers to save time for planning and re-planning the tasks.

The most important features:

Ability to plan and re-plan on the spot, including altering the dates for multiple tasks.

Support for user databases with large number of tasks without performance degradation.

Representation of hierarchy and relations between change requests as aggregate tasks and implementation sequence – complete visualization of relations (hierarchy and relations between tasks).

Display of brief information about a task as a tool tip.

Display of UML state chart for every task (through the context menu).

Ability to open change request forms directly from a chart.

Different representations of a project (as a Gantt chart or as resources load by day).

GanttChart for ClearQuest is a plug-in for IBM Rational ClearQuest 7.x or 8.x version. This plug-in is of interest for everybody who uses IBM Rational ClearQuest and who lacks for project management functionality. The module does not substitute the existing project management tools. It just adds operational slices into IBM Rational. For most users, the functions provided by the plug-in are enough for planning and operation management. GanttChart for ClearQuest is added to the IBM Global Solutions Directory with the ID 41151.

Years of experience with IBM’s change management tool – IBM Rational ClearQuest – have brought to light both its good and bad sides. While there is no doubt in the flexibility of the mechanism for creating and editing change management schemas (creating forms, programming states and transitions for change requests), one can notice a drawback in the process of programming the state transition matrix when defining the lifecycle of a change request.

In a simple scenario, a CM Manager first develops the structure of a Change Request and describes its lifecycle in a UML diagram (this is the abstract, descriptive level, see Picture 1 . After a cycle of approval, the diagram is sent to a transition matrix programmer (perhaps the Change Management Administrator), who creates a low-level implementation of the process in IBM Rational ClearQuest, based on the UML diagram.

This is an ideal scenario, which isn’t as common in practice as it should be. The Change Request lifecycle is often programmed directly into IBM Rational ClearQuest, and the UML model is never created.

As a rule, the processes used in an organization don’t remain frozen – they evolve with time. As a process evolves, the schema of a process (in ClearQuest), and its UML model must both be changed. Both operations are manual. So a CM administrator would have to commit the changes to the model first, then to the ClearQuest schema (or vice versa). Both operations are prone to human error: an important transition could be missed either in the schema, or in the diagram. Unfortunately, this happens all the time in practice. The disparity between the schema and model of a documented process can be as high as 30%. Often a process continues to evolve, but its description gets left behind, and the changes go undocumented.

Picture 2 The state transition matrix in IBM Rational ClearQuest. The sequence of transitions between different states in a change request is defined here. This matrix is a physical, low-level depiction of the process. The screenshot shows the transition matrix for the “Defect” change request.

The solution to this problem lies on the surface: connect a UML modeling tool, like IBM Rational Software Architect, to ClearQuest, and import a Change Request lifecycle into that tool, then output the state transition matrix as a UML diagram.

Such a solution would make the current state of a process readily available as a UML diagram, without the potential for translation errors.

This article describes in detail how to create an RSA plug-in that will perform the outlined actions.

The next logical step in making such a plug-in is providing the opportunity to export a UML diagram describing the lifecycle of a process to a ClearQuest schema, allowing for a fully automated creation process, but that is a topic of a separate article.

Rational Software Architect is a modern integrated development environment based on Eclipse.

Eclipse in turn is an expandable IDE; in fact, its broad capability for expansion is what makes it stand out from most other modern development environments. Eclipse is a Rich Client Platform, which means it has a micro kernel that controls the lifecycle of the application and a host of auxiliary services, which can be accessed when integrating with the environment.

RSA can be thought of as an expanded version of Eclipse, featuring additional development tools, which retains Eclipse’s ability for further expansion.

The prime instrument for enhancing RSA’s functionality is the plug-in. Plug-ins can have any functionality attached to them – anything that can be written in Java can work inside an Eclipse plug-in.

Plug-ins can often be very heavyweight applications, and since the environment consists of a large number of plug-ins, which must all be initialized, it usually takes a long time to launch. For this reason it can be difficult to debug plug-ins in the development environment (especially considering that it can take a long time just to update a plug-in to the latest version – RSA 7.0.0 searches all known update sites for plug-ins, and there’s no mechanism to update only a single plug-in). So for testing needs, a specialRuntime Workbench is used.

The Runtime Workbench has all the services required for RSA to work properly, but usually only contains a small subset of the plug-ins used in the normal workbench (the exact configuration of plug-ins used in the Runtime Workbench can be found inWindow à Preferences à Plug-in development à Target platform).

However, even with the simplifications of the Runtime Workbench, RSA’s initialization can still take a rather long time. For more effective testing and debugging, a simpler type of application can be used, which, like the plug-in, has access to RSA’s inner services – the Pluglet. It can be launched directly from a working RSA instance, without the need for a Runtime Workbench. Pluglets are a feature available only in RSA, not in Eclipse.

Unfortunately, Pluglets are not fit for some tasks. In Rational Software Architect 7.0.0, a Pluglet containing native calls can’t be launched more than once without restarting the environment, which beats the point of using them (it’s faster to launch a Runtime Workbench than to restart the environment). This problem arises because a native library can only be loaded in one Java class loader at a time, and on second launch the Pluglet thinks the library it needs is already loaded in another class loader, but it has no access to the loaded library.

In this article we’ll emphasize using native libraries to interact with ClearQuest, so we won’t look into Pluglets any further.

Plug-ins can extend the user interface, perform background tasks or provide services to other plug-ins. The specific way a plug-in is connected to the environment can be configured when creating the plug-in.

A plug-in can be built into almost any place in RSA’s user interface: different context menus, the Menu Bar, a custom View (that can be created specifically for the plug-in). The conditions under which the plug-in becomes accessible can also be configured – for example, a context menu plug-in might appear only when the context menu is called on files of a certain type.

In this article we’ll plug into the Menu Bar, creating our own menu group.

As a rule, the processes used in an organization don’t remain frozen – they evolve with time. As a process evolves, the schema of a process (in ClearQuest), and its UML model must both be changed. Both operations are manual. So a CM administrator would have to commit the changes to the model first, then to the ClearQuest schema (or vice versa). Both operations are prone to human error: an important transition could be missed either in the schema, or in the diagram. Unfortunately, this happens all the time in practice. The disparity between the schema and model of a documented process can be as high as 30%. Often a process continues to evolve, but its description gets left behind, and the changes go undocumented.

Picture 2 The state transition matrix in IBM Rational ClearQuest. The sequence of transitions between different states in a change request is defined here. This matrix is a physical, low-level depiction of the process. The screenshot shows the transition matrix for the “Defect” change request.

The solution to this problem lies on the surface: connect a UML modeling tool, like IBM Rational Software Architect, to ClearQuest, and import a Change Request lifecycle into that tool, then output the state transition matrix as a UML diagram.

Such a solution would make the current state of a process readily available as a UML diagram, without the potential for translation errors.

This article describes in detail how to create an RSA plug-in that will perform the outlined actions.

The next logical step in making such a plug-in is providing the opportunity to export a UML diagram describing the lifecycle of a process to a ClearQuest schema, allowing for a fully automated creation process, but that is a topic of a separate article.

Rational Software Architect is a modern integrated development environment based on Eclipse.

Eclipse in turn is an expandable IDE; in fact, its broad capability for expansion is what makes it stand out from most other modern development environments. Eclipse is a Rich Client Platform, which means it has a micro kernel that controls the lifecycle of the application and a host of auxiliary services, which can be accessed when integrating with the environment.

RSA can be thought of as an expanded version of Eclipse, featuring additional development tools, which retains Eclipse’s ability for further expansion.

The prime instrument for enhancing RSA’s functionality is the plug-in. Plug-ins can have any functionality attached to them – anything that can be written in Java can work inside an Eclipse plug-in.

Plug-ins can often be very heavyweight applications, and since the environment consists of a large number of plug-ins, which must all be initialized, it usually takes a long time to launch. For this reason it can be difficult to debug plug-ins in the development environment (especially considering that it can take a long time just to update a plug-in to the latest version – RSA 7.0.0 searches all known update sites for plug-ins, and there’s no mechanism to update only a single plug-in). So for testing needs, a specialRuntime Workbench is used.

The Runtime Workbench has all the services required for RSA to work properly, but usually only contains a small subset of the plug-ins used in the normal workbench (the exact configuration of plug-ins used in the Runtime Workbench can be found inWindow à Preferences à Plug-in development à Target platform).

However, even with the simplifications of the Runtime Workbench, RSA’s initialization can still take a rather long time. For more effective testing and debugging, a simpler type of application can be used, which, like the plug-in, has access to RSA’s inner services – the Pluglet. It can be launched directly from a working RSA instance, without the need for a Runtime Workbench. Pluglets are a feature available only in RSA, not in Eclipse.

Unfortunately, Pluglets are not fit for some tasks. In Rational Software Architect 7.0.0, a Pluglet containing native calls can’t be launched more than once without restarting the environment, which beats the point of using them (it’s faster to launch a Runtime Workbench than to restart the environment). This problem arises because a native library can only be loaded in one Java class loader at a time, and on second launch the Pluglet thinks the library it needs is already loaded in another class loader, but it has no access to the loaded library.

In this article we’ll emphasize using native libraries to interact with ClearQuest, so we won’t look into Pluglets any further.

Plug-ins can extend the user interface, perform background tasks or provide services to other plug-ins. The specific way a plug-in is connected to the environment can be configured when creating the plug-in.

A plug-in can be built into almost any place in RSA’s user interface: different context menus, the Menu Bar, a custom View (that can be created specifically for the plug-in). The conditions under which the plug-in becomes accessible can also be configured – for example, a context menu plug-in might appear only when the context menu is called on files of a certain type.

In this article we’ll plug into the Menu Bar, creating our own menu group.

CM-Consult announced
that it now provides a free, fully-functional and unrestricted edition
of its flagship product GanttChart
for ClearQuest . People who download this free edition are
entitled to 15 days of free technical support as well.

Experts from CM-Consult fully adapted GanttChart for IBM Rational ClearQuest v.8.0 . Currently GanttChartforClearQuest supports the following versions of IBM Rational ClearQuest: 6.x, 7.x, and 8.x. Besides, in release 1.4 of GanttChart performance of the application when displaying a large number of tasks was improved.

GanttChart for ClearQuest is a unique plug-in for IBM Rational ClearQuest developed by CM-Consult. It allows project managers, executives, and all team members to view tasks from the project plan. Project managers like GanttChart because it is easy to use. With two clicks GanttChart allows re-planning tasks, and automatically updates the corresponding task fields. That is GanttChart for ClearQuest allows you to plan tasks directly from ClearQuest in real time mode.

Also, project managers will definitely like the ability to visualize
the transition tree of each request. This function not only displays the
graphic representation of a state chart, but also allows viewing the
number of transitions between states (number of loops). If a task was
sent for rework several times, this information will be available in the
state chart.

The most important feature is that after the
installation GanttChart works as a single application with ClearQuest,
and allows project managers to save time for planning and re-planning
the tasks.

GanttChart is compatible with any ClearQuest schema including standard ALM schema and any customized user schema.
Sometimes it is required to perform minor corrections to the custom
schema to be able to use all features of the application.

The most important features include:

Ability to plan and re-plan on the spot, including altering the dates for multiple tasks.

Support for user databases with large number of tasks without performance degradation.

Representation
of hierarchy and relations between change requests as aggregate tasks
and implementation sequence – complete visualization of relations
(hierarchy and relations between tasks).

Display of brief information about a task as a tool tip.

Display of UML state chart for every task (through the context menu).

Ability to open change request forms directly from a chart.

Different representations of a project (as a Gantt chart or as resources load by day).

Change requests are highlighted in different colors depending on their completion status. Such
highlighting allows distinguish tasks by status, for example, green –
completed; yellow – in progress; red – late and not started yet; crimson
– in progress but late; blue – planned; gray – new not planned task.

Point to the task to view brief information about it

GanttChart configuration is easy and intuitive

Visualization
of states provides a convenient representation of task change history.
It represents states and transitions between states, and also calculates
and displays their number. It is convenient, when you need to find out
how many times a task (or any change request) has been returned for
rework. For your convenience, you can rearrange states by moving by a
mouse.

You can analyze the resources usage in a special representation of GanttChart

Using context menu, you can easily configure and manage the Gantt chart

GanttChart is a powerful complex tool necessary for every manager who uses ClearQuest.
Powerful planning and visualization capabilities, and interactive
configuration makes GanttChart even more attractive for those who want
to save time and get more functionality from ClearQuest.

Currently GanttChart for ClearQuest
is available for ClearQuest v.6, v.7, and v.8. English and German
interfaces are available. Our company can localize GanttChart for
ClearQuest interface for your language within 10-15 days.

You can download 30-day fully functional trial version from our website after filling a short form.

After
you fill the form, our representative will contact you, and send you
the distribution kit and the license key. The key allows using all
functions of the application for 30 days.

Our licensing scheme allows choosing the best service plan for each customer.

Saving
project manager’s time for the replanning of request groups (change
requests and extension requests). Especially within service oriented
approach when a great number of requests every day require a special
attention.

Effectively distributing the resources.

Transferring requests from one state to another on-the-fly.

Shifting the groups of tasks and requests (change planned dates) in drag-and-drop mode.

The GanttChart for ClearQuest tool has proved to be a very
successful add-on for the ClearQuest system. It significantly
simplifies the planning process in ClearQuest. Standard
integration of IBM Rational ClearQuest and MS
Project allows solving a number of same tasks that GanttChart
solves, but with GanttChart it is much more convenient
to work with a large number of heterogeneous relations between change requests,
including hierarchical and sequential relations. Besides, there is no need to
use two tools at the same time – a project manager can well do with
ClearQuest with GanttChart add-on
installed.Our experts have gained much use from this tool.
GanttChart flexible settings allow configuring the necessary representation of a
Gantt chart to be displayed. Every user has got an opportunity to build
“their own” Gantt chart, where they can see the set of tasks assigned to them,
and every task can be highlighted by a necessary color depending on its status,
that allows the user to organize their working time in the better way.
Additionally GanttChart has particularly flexible creating a Gantt chart
with any queries.

The major advantage of the GanttChart tool is the
ability to graphically represent states of activities. When
you have a large number of activities it is difficult to visually
represent and estimate them using the grid view only. In such case, a
chart is very useful. Another advantage is the possibility to modify
dates of activities in graphic view (i.e. in a chart itself) that
simplifies data updating in ClearQuest.

This is a usefull and successful solution
allowing to simplify a life to ClearQuest users who got used to work
with Gantt charts. Visualisation of hierarchy and
relationships of change requests of different types allows to
accelerate the analysis of a current tasks' status and to make a
decision faster.

With GanttChart module my team achieved possibility to
plan tasks for change requests resolving right after acceptance, in
the same tool, without any intermediate steps. I recommend
this tool as a rapid-planning extension to all teams, which use
ClearQuest.

CM-Consult’s GanttChart is a product that was
wanted by many project managers using IBM Rational ClearQuest.
It allows executing almost every PM’s task within IBM Rational
ClearQuest in a new and agile way.

The CMC-Visualizer for Team Concert module is developed for user-friendly provision of data about change requests stored in IBM Rational Team Concert. The CMC-Visualizer features include the visualization of the tree of request states, display of the requests hierarchy as a Gantt chart, and generation of reports on change requests in PDF format.

CMC-Visualizer for Team Concert is capable to considerably facilitate the analysis of change requests for project managers. CMC-Visualizer is a Plug-in, which is installed into TeamConcert. After installation, the module integrates into the Team Concert context menu.

Efficient mechanisms of information display make CMC-Visualizer for Team Concert a very important tool for both project managers and all other participants.

Main features

Display of history of change requests as an UML diagram. There are three display modes:

All the statuses and transitions between the statuses are displayed right along. The total number of transitions from one status to another is calculated. The calculation is especially useful for the analysis of causes of repeated return (for instance, reopening of a task or multiple correction of a defect).

Only statuses and transitions from real history are displayed. This mode, in contrast to the previous one, displays only the statuses, for which the change request has already passed, and not the whole scope of statuses.

Only the statuses and transitions from real history are displayed with an option to display the statuses, to which a transition is possible. It differs from the previous one by the option of displaying the statuses, to which a transition from the current one is possible. This mode facilitates perception of information on the life cycle of a change request.

Display of the hierarchy of change requests

It allows displaying the hierarchy and dependencies between change requests (the dependencies are only displayed if it is allowed by the IBM Rational Team Concert scheme).

All descendants (child requests) and ancestors for the current (selected in the context menu) change request are displayed as a Gantt chart.

The scheduled and actual start and finish terms are displayed (if allowed by the IBM Rational Team Concert scheme).

Change requests with no scheduled dates are displayed as milestones.

Reporting

The module allows collecting and representing the cumulative information on a change request as a PDF file. The report consists of the following sections:

Brief summary on the change request.

Tree of states.

Hierarchy of requests.

History of changes.

User attributes (the combination of attributes depends on the scheme, and is selected by the user while setting up CMC-Visualizer).

To facilitate installation and use of our GanttChart for ClearQuest
solution, we provide special configuration files within the
installation package that allow automatically configure the program to
use the ALM schema. You can also download the configuration files from
our web site. Configuration files allow facilitating the GanttChart for
ClearQuest configuration if the ALM schema is used (see 5. Configuring
GanttChart for ClearQuest with supplied configuration). If you use
another schema, it is recommended that you read the User Guide to be
able to configure GanttChart for ClearQuest manually according to your
ClearQuest schema. Our solutions are compatible with any ClearQuest
schema. If you have difficulties with configuration, contact our support
service. In complex cases we can release the package for your
ClearQuest schema that will allow you to use our solutions to the
maximum... Read more

The module is made in the form of Plug-in for IBM Rational ClearQuest 7.0 and upper. This
module is intended for every person who uses IBM Rational ClearQuest
and is short of project management capabilities. The module does not
substitute for existing project management tools but adds the
operational sections into IBM Rational. For the most
experienced users the functions of this module will be absolutely
enough for ad-hock planning and operational management of their
projects. The module has no analogues in the world!

The module is made in the form of Plug-in for IBM Rational ClearQuest 7.0 and upper. This
module is intended for every person who uses IBM Rational ClearQuest
and is short of project management capabilities. The module does not
substitute for existing project management tools but adds the
operational sections into IBM Rational. For the most
experienced users the functions of this module will be absolutely
enough for ad-hock planning and operational management of their
projects. The module has no analogues in the world!

Annotation

Those who works are used to work with IBM Rational ClearQuest
obviously have a sense of a small limitation of its capabilities in the
area of clear activities planning for change requests (tasks, bug
reports etc.). That is they can set up the requests to show task chain,
dates, workload etc but all this will be shown as usual list of tasks.
And to change anything in several tasks they should enter every task
separately and fulfill the number of monotonous actions. This problem
related to the work with complex hierarchical tasks and plans can be
easily settled with the module GanttChart 1.0 for ClearQuest.

GanttChart 1.0 for ClearQuest can be applied interesting for everyone who uses IBM Rational ClearQuest
and is in shortage of the project management capabilities. Our module
doesn’t substitute for existing project management tools but adds the
operational sections into IBM Rational tools instead (perhaps in next
versions we’ll cope to transfer the most of MS Project functions into
ClearQuest). The module considerably simplifies the management of
the complex hierarchical tasks. This allows freeing project managers of
routine operations and focusing on the main task.

GanttChart 1.0 for ClearQuest – is the new generation module that is intended for concerted operations with IBM Rational ClearQuest Eclipse.
All project management functions of the module are available
immediately after its installation in the standard menu of IBM
ClearQuest.

GanttChart 1.0 for ClearQuest
is the very flexible solution which allows setting up any change
requests with any relations and any nesting level, granting meanwhile
the fine tuning of additional fields.

Here are the fundamental capabilities of GanttChart 1.0 for ClearQuest:

Multiplatform. Our module is being incorporated into the Eclipse client of IBM Rational ClearQuest and works on different platforms of Widows and Unix.

There is no necessity of additional software.
Everything works in one tool - IBM Rational ClearQuest. The exceptions
are the functions of budgeting, resource distribution and portfolio
management.

The only one data source
and the synchronization in real time. The module allows showing the
real state of projecting activities basing on the last changes in IBM
Rational ClearQuest. There is no necessity to make additional
synchronization or data duplication for it. All visualization functions are real time.

All functions of IBM Rational ClearQuest are still accessible.
Because of module embedding into IBM Rational ClearQuest the user has
an access to the planning capabilities by Gantt diagram and to all the
functions of IBM Rational ClearQuest (building requests, reports,
graphs etc) at the same time.

Main capabilities

Support for multiple platforms;

Real time synchronization of Gantt diagram and ClearQuest requests;

Visualization of the request’s hierarchy and their relations as Gantt diagram;

Tasks
visualization basing on the completed queries. Allows showing the
realization plan of any concrete ClearQuest request on basis of
existing report. For instance, for the realization of the Request
(or Defect) ‘A’ there was created a plan, and also created plans for
Requests ‘B’ and ‘C’. The pool of tasks is formed for requests
realization.
Now it’s enough for project manager to form the query which is showing
the composition of the subsidiary requests. In this case our module
will show the list of active tasks for the ensemble of the requests
with granting the whole plan of all the executives for the ensemble.
This function allows to project manager not only the structure of tasks
but to correlate the tasks register with the requests register (or
defect one);

Visualization of the task fulfillment percentage;

Visualization of the ratio for planned terms and fact terms;

Visualization
the change requests with the different color schemes depending on their
fulfillment stage and realization on time. The color
highlighting will help to separate tasks by their status, e.g. green –
complete, yellow – in progress, red – is behind time, blue – only
planned;

Decomposition of the Gantt diagram for complex Requests;

Changing and saving the results of such changing of the planned terms for requests;

CM-Consult Company announces the release of the new solution that
performs background tracking of time an owner spends on task
fulfillment. This solution is designed to ease estimation of task
duration. Mechanisms underlying TimeTraker functioning allow saving
ClearQuest licenses used. You can download a demo version from our web
site after filling in the simple form.

IBM
Rational ClearQuest TimeTracker allows you to improve the
process of estimating time actually spent on tasks and increase
effectiveness of working time planning, both personal and of the whole
project. It also allows saving ClearQuest licenses
used.ClearQuest TimeTracker allows you to launch
tracking of time spent on tasks by the single mouse click.Since
ClearQuest Time Tracker automatically gets the list of tasks and
updates task statuses, the time an employee spends working with
ClearQuest significantly reduces, that allows saving up to 40% of
ClearQuest licenses. Such saving is achieved due to decrease of user
session duration in ClearQuest.Solution
type: Application. Prerequisites: Requires
IBM Rational ClearQuest installed in the system. Delivery
type: Windows distributive. Compatibility: Compatible
with ClearQuest 7.0 and upper. Multilanguage support: Yes.